Minecraft Legends Review

Available on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PlayStation, Steam and Nintendo Switch

Version tested: Xbox Series X and PC

So we finally have another Minecraft spin off! This time Mojang is treating it’s fans to a new real time strategy game in this whole new adventure.

Minecraft seems to have been around for a lifetime and still now is a game you can just jump back into and enjoy, it’s on virtually every platform going and can be played by just about anyone of any age.

Minecraft dungeons released fairly recently back in 2020 and was in my opinion a very good game taking on a Diablo style and kept me coming back especially on Co-Op with my son for months after launch. Minecraft Legends is a completely different adventure into a whole different genre, my only worry is will there be enough Minecraft here to attract new fans or keep existing ones happy?

Straight away you will notice the Minecraft style visuals, while not quite up to the Ray-Tracing quality and amazing visuals of the original Minecraft everything still looks nice and performance was very smooth throughout. The worlds are very open but can feel a little sparce in places when travelling around defeating Piglins and taking out their fortifications.

Combat is where things start to take a little turn for the worse though! Hitting enemies with your weapon gives you absolutely nothing back when it comes to feedback. I found I was constantly just swinging the sword around on horseback hoping to hit something, this doesn’t really require any sort of skill and just feels pretty rubbish.

Fighting alone isn’t really a viable option though and very soon after you start you will need to summon your little fighting army of golems to help you! While they do take some the attention off of your hero the AI here is terrible and at times extremely frustrating, your allies don’t have any kind of ability to attack unless you tell them to, quite often they will totally ignore enemies and it just leaves you feeling like you are just there to babysit otherwise they are just happy to stand there and do nothing! Controlling your army is also not the easiest of tasks as the pathfinding often leaves some of them stuck and unable to even get to the battle you are in the middle of, this requires you to go and get them and guide them to the battle. Something that would have also been nice would be the ability to control specific troops, certain troops are good for taking down structures while others are good for taking out piglins but there is no way to choose what to control and the only option is a wave of your flag to take control of the whole lot around you and send them all together.

The controls in game are pretty fiddly too with multiple different key presses needed to access different items and options, trying to use this during the heat of an attack can leave you in a bit of a panicked mess just trying to do the simplest of tasks. Using a mouse and keyboard was ok but using a controller was more than difficult to master!

Obviously being a Minecraft game you have to expect to be building and in Legends you can! Building different structures will require you to collect resources, this is done by discovering them and then sending one of your little helpers to collect the desires resource. Building the structures and defences was probably the most fun part of Legends with plenty of different structures and defences to construct into a perfect base to fight off the attacking Piglin Hordes.

Combat really isn’t the strong point here and I imagine most will get bored fast with the repetitive nature of the gameplay, fighting of hordes of piglins soon gets repetitive as does taking down their fortifications. The storyline is a good one and starts well but it soon becomes apparent that everything is a bit shallow when it comes to stuff to do, quite often you question why your not just playing actual Minecraft.

When it comes to sound it was ok, all the usual Minecraft noises and music but voice acting was very cheesy and didn’t sound very good in all honesty. I don’t like to put any kind of voice acting down in games as it’s always a great feature but it really wasn’t the greatest here.

Last up is co-op multiplayer and possibly Legends biggest positive! Playing the whole campaign in co-op with up to three other friends is the best way to play by far! Working together to build the perfect base while also collecting resources and defending/attacking together was much more fun than doing it all alone.

Verdict:

Ok so this isn’t ever going to compare to the original Minecraft, Dungeons in my opinion was a very good spin off but sadly Legends isn’t there yet , co-op is the strongest part here and hopefully they can build on it and tweak some of the issues. The controls are a bit of a mess, the AI is awful at times and the whole experience is very repetitive. Graphics and sound were nice, although voice acting wasn’t great. I can’t imagine many Minecraft fans will find much to like here other than the art style although it’s free with Game Pass so maybe worth a go for RTS fans although don’t expect any sort of C&C level of action here it is a far simpler experience.

Score:

7.2 / 10

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Code was provided free of charge for my honest unbiased review.